Hay and foraging equipment are utilized in the processing of plant material and include mowers, conditioners, flail choppers, windrowers, and balers for both dry and silage uses. The hay system, such as a round baler, includes a pickup mechanism, which picks the crop material from the ground and supplies it to a bale forming chamber. The bale forming chamber receives the crop material and includes a series of side-by-side moving belts, which rotate the crop material into a round or more accurately a cylindrical bale. Typically, the bale forming chamber has a crop inlet and has a width that corresponds to the width of the bale being formed within the bale forming chamber. The crop material is typically initially formed into windrows on the ground after it is cut and processed through a conditioner. The crop material in the windrow may have varying densities and may even include foreign material. The pickup header of the baler picks the crop material off of the ground and directs it to the bale forming chamber.
As the baler is driven across the field encountering crop material, the crop material may be bunched or otherwise non-uniformly distributed causing surges in the amount of power required from the power source to process the material encountered. If the material encountered is too thick or even includes some foreign material such as a piece of wood or a stone, a plug can be formed that causes the baling mechanism to be overloaded. Typically, this requires operator intervention requiring the operator to stop the tractor and try to unplug it by perhaps reversing the travel of the tractor to try to pull some of the material out. The encountering of a plug often requires the operator to stop the drive mechanism and then release various aspects of the baler mechanism associated with the flow of the material so that the plug can be removed either manually or by operating portions of the baler with mechanisms in their non-normal operating positions to try to clear the plug from the baler. Once the plug is removed, the operator then goes and repositions the mechanisms that were disengaged, moving them back into a normal operating position. This prior art techniques disadvantageously require operator intervention and the operator can even potentially damage the machine by operating it with only some of the mechanisms being moved to a released position.
Various unplugging devices are included in the feeding systems on hay and forage equipment which include drop floors, knife disengagement, reversers, rotor movement, pickup baffle positioners, power feed clutches, and the like. These devices are activated electrically, hydraulically, PTO driven, or a combination thereof. These devices are activated individually to make the necessary steps to relieve tight plugs and to then sequentially feed crops through the feeding device. Actuating these devices individually is cumbersome, time-consuming and difficult to understand for inexperienced operators. For example, if knives are not lowered during reversing or dropping the floor operations can cause damage if they are out of position.
What is needed in the art is a system that manages the unplugging of hay or forage equipment in a cost effective and efficient manner.